Jorgenfist Planning

[Tahlvin]

Honey, you and I!

[Zen]

And I'll take any risk to tie back the hands of time

[Tahlvin]

And stay with you here tonight.

[Mike]

Everyone plays along! YAY!

[Tahlvin]

See, I told you everything would be okay!

Okay, I didn't quite expect the first giant to go down quite so quickly. The hits with the giant bane arrows certainly helped, along with Kay's critical hit, and neither of those probably would have been possible without Sam and Anna slowing and dazzling him first. But we faced him down and won.

I'm a little bit surprised how easily these other giants are going down.

[Zen]

Well, I know that without the slow and dazzle, I wouldn't have stepped in with my weapon and a chance for a crit like that one, but would have used a spell with a larger single shot damage potential. (And that roll wouldn't have been a crit with shocking grasp.)

The next group was softened up by a nice, large fireball as well. The ones we're fighting now are a bit fresher I think.

[Phoebe]

I'm worried that we need major spellcasting to do what we are doing now. Dwyn was only doing what she did because of the aid of +5s in all depts and other offense spells. But if we use up all of our spell casting, we are past a point of no return. We can't attack a bunch of giants without triggering a manhunt at some point, even if we go back in the tunnel and try to hide out and sleep (or let just the spellcasters sleep, even).

[Zen]

Yeah... Once we've disrupted the mess hall we're probably on a timetable. I hope we'll be able to rest up after this encounter though.

[Tahlvin]

I'm torn between resting up now, or trying to take out a few more lower-power encounters before resting (at the risk of bumping into a higher power encountered), so we have less to work through before having to take another break. But we said we'd break after this, so I'm okay if that's what everyone else wants.

[Bluedevyl]

In terms of spells, Anna is quite okay to continue for a while. She's only used 4 spells since we started, and one of those was a mage armor. I worry about resting too soon after a potential alarm has been raised, as we may come out of whatever room we're resting in to meet some percentage of the hundred-odd giants that are outside.

I can't speak for the other casters, but Anna is good to go for several more encounters before spell availability becomes an issue.

[Zen]

Kay is probably good as well. This has gone easier than expected and she has only used the minimum of defensive spells pretty much.

[Phoebe]

OK, that makes me feel better. Do we have major things like Slow or Silence or other tools that would be particularly effective against some kind of evil magic user who can make the mountain get up and punch us, from what we are told? I thought maybe that dude we faced yesterday with the Pick was The Big Guy and instead he was like, some small pick wielding outer minion. That scares me, you know, I scare easily.

Also, I've been thinking about some things - always dangerous. Dwyn is kind of a morose person, you know? A bit tragically earnest, cheerful mostly about day-to-day things like food, and otherwise kind of glum and even disapproving in that provincial way. She's always been that way - the oldest and biggest and thus the workhorse of the family, the plain one, the gullible one, the quiet one, the easily-overlooked one until you need someone to haul buckets of water or bring the cows in. She's not the clever reader, or the numbers person, or the musical singer or player, though she admires all those things in others. So she trudges along, trying to be useful - aspiring to something better than useful, something more heroically helpful.

Meanwhile, she can't shake the sense that it's not going to end well. She'll follow what she takes to be a divine call, to help protect the innocents of her world from a mysterious and growing presence of monstrous evil. But just like her dad eventually met a bad end, she feels a gloomy sense that that ultimate happiness is elusive. You meet a boy, and then you've gotta leave town. You try even harder to form a lasting future (with boy or in some other part of the life plan), and next thing you know you're out here totally outmatched and confused, deep in the dreary northern hinterlands where your dad did all the difficult mercenary work that possibly led to his untimely end. Does following in Dad's footsteps mean dying by the sword (or stone)? Honestly, I'm worried that she's pregnant and in that earliest weird stage before anyone would even know it, where happy TV commercials make you break down bawling for no good reason (except for the lack of TV in this world). Then some monstrous giant or giant boulder is probably going to off her before boyfriend even knows they could have gotten married and had a kid on some unassuming patch of farmland. Crap. This movie is supposed to be a light comedy and now it's getting grim.

[Mike]

Oh my God! I didn't even think about pregnancy. What if Dothan's pregnant?!?

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

[Bluedevyl]

I dont like the idea of using Illian as a stealth assassin for multiple reasons, unless Anna goes with him invisibly. Mostly, it's that Dave isn't going to be around for the next month, and it seems like a gratuitous abuse of his character while he's away. Also, it's no longer nighttime. I think its fairly unlikely that we're going to stumble onto any more barracks between here and M.

Also, what if someone sees him and he's alone? He's pretty fragile. We'd never be able to reach him in time to help.

[Phoebe]

Ahhh, forgot about Dave not being here. I choose to pretend it's not real.

[Tahlvin]

Eldthor can do some scouting. He might not be in Illian's league, but he does have a +19 stealth bonus. Couple that with a message spell keeping me in touch with the rest of the group, and I can scout ahead and at least give us some warning of anything we're likely to run into. Eldthor won't be trying to assassinate anybody in their sleep.

[Zen]

Kay's stealth is only +13. She hasn't really concentrated that much on that skill, compared to acrobatics, perception, and disable device... (She has a natural affinity for disable device... and had to compensate for the lower wisdom bonus with perception to have the same bonus there as she does for stealth with more ranks...) So with Illian out of the mix for a while, Eldthor is probably the stealthiest of the bunch, especially if he uses his "Cat's Grace" spell...

[Eliahad]

I would feel comfortable with folks using Illian for stealth. But since I think I'm only thinking of assassinating people on a case-by-case basis, I'd rather be there for that. I'm still super uncomfortable about the four giants I already killed when they couldn't defend themselves. Illian had a rather bizarre reaction to it that I'm still processing as a player. So if you want to use him as a scout I'm okay with that, but no killing people please. Stealth is currently +29 and Perception is +23.

(You know, I wonder if I should stop progressing through the 2 weapon fighter archetype and switch to full on scout/rogue. I don't know how I feel about that.)